


Camile

by Cendrillon



Category: Carmilla - All Media Types, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: M/M, Psychological Horror, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7637737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cendrillon/pseuds/Cendrillon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nightmare is just a nightmare, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> hello!  
> I'm writing a classic vampire tale inspired in joseph S. Lefanu´s “Carmilla” and since it seems to be loved by some friends, I thought I may share it here too.  
> I would like to publish chapters every month, both in spanish and english.  
> English updates maybe take me a little longer since it is not my native language and I need someone to read and correct my translations.
> 
> In my version, the story happens between two boys instead of two girls and in the present time, just like in Lefanu's story.  
> I'll be following the line of the original tale but also adding a lot of new things.
> 
> I love classic vampire tales. Hope you will like this and would love to hear from you if you want to leave some feedback.

__________________________________________________________________

Before I start, more than anything else, I must tell you about the nightmare.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with the rest of my story, or it may seem like something stupid to you, but, for me, it is the first significant moment of my life.I say “significant” because it is the very first dream I remember having, and the impression it left resulted in a fear of darkness that marked me for years.

I was very young; I couldn’t have been older than six or seven years old.

At that time our home was still under construction and my bedroom was far from my parents'. I slept in the room under the roof, which I loved and later was transformed into a little library. The room was not very big and I remember it was full of boxes and flat packed furniture. Unassembled things were put here and there and my toys and books were also all over the place. Only my bed and a little closet were the proof that it was actually a bedroom and not just the storage room.

I assure you I was never a fearful child. I went to the attic alone every night after dinner and my father would kiss me goodnight at the foot of the stairs. I read well for my age and I enjoyed solitude. It was easy to find me at night, tucked in bed with a book in my hands. Sometimes I was not even reading, just letting my imagination run wild until sleep defeated me.

One night I woke up in the morning.

It was early summer but the high humidity made it stifling. I sat in my bed, confused. I felt like if I had been dreaming, but couldn´t remember anything. I rubbed my eyes trying to escape from sleep. I wanted to wake up and drink a glass of water. My eyes were still a little clouded but I finally started recognizing all the familiar things around me even if I was still in the darkness, the soft blue light of dawn not really illuminating anything yet.

Then I saw him.

He was squatting between the boxes and furniture and looking at me with a strange intense expression that slowly softened, changed until it was transformed into a friendly, almost tender, glance.

I still don’t know the reason why I didn’t panic at that moment.

He was young. Beautiful. His face had slightly angular features framed by long dark hair.

His clothes were different from anything I’d seen before, giving him an exotic look, like one of the characters from my books. He looked strange, _human_ but...  _unreal_. And even as a child I thought he was, in fact, very attractive.

While I was staring at him in awe, he moved carefully to my bed, as if he did not mean to scare me. He held my ankles, softly lifting my feet and making me lay down again. His touch was a little cold but, given the weather, it was nice, and I quickly forgot any discomfort and felt better. Refreshed. A strange feeling of relief invading me now that he was close. He kept his hands under the sheets and caressed my feet tenderly, almost…motherly. It tickled, so I laughed and without looking at me, he smiled to himself and kissed my toes mumbling some words I didn’t understand. Stretching his arms up, he ran his fingers along my legs and finally rested his hands over my chest.

I could not fathom the reason, but the longer he touched me, the better I felt.

Relaxed, I started to doze off again but tried to fight against it with all my might. His presence was so fascinating I couldn’t let him go back to the weird dream he had surely escaped from.

To prevent him from vanishing once I closed my eyes, I held his wrists tightly to my chest. He looked pleased and smiled again, this time to me. His dark eyes shone bright in the dark like the eyes of a dog and I felt suddenly shy and closed mine.

He got into my bed, held me close to him and started singing in a sweet low voice, almost whispering against my ear. Sure that I was somehow in the arms of a magical creature, I surrendered to his lullaby and fell deeply asleep.

  
I suddenly woke up again shrouded in pain with a huge weight on me.

I didn’t know for how long had I been sleeping but something big and black was crushing me.

It was a shadow, but also not. It was physical, real, covered in black fur and smelt like a wet dog. I couldn’t breathe.

I felt a long cold needle piercing my chest and smothering me. My lungs were freezing and burning at the same time. I started kicking and punching with all the strength I had. I fought desperately but that thing, that kind of animal, didn’t release me. When I finally got to scream, I swear I did it at the top of my lungs until my throat ached like if I had drunk liquid fire. The sensation of being under a jet of cold water ran through my body, I felt dizzy and wet myself. Unable to see anything or find the light switch, I thought I was about to die. I grabbed fistfuls of black fur and pulled as strong as I could to no avail, trying to make the thing fall from the bed. In that moment I heard my father calling my name, his voice full of concern was like a miracle and gave me the power to start screaming again.

The animal, suddenly, let me go then and I thought I’d seen it hiding under my bed.

My father came into my room, worried and scared from my cries, and turned on all the lights.

I was now crying so hard I could barely breathe; let alone say a word to explain what has happened. I remember him taking me in his arms and carrying me out of the bedroom, but I only calmed down a little after he gave me a bath, put on a clean pajamas and assured me many times that it had all been a nightmare.

I couldn’t bear to go back to the attic nonetheless, but he insisted until I gave in.

My dad asked me to go with him to inspect, so he could demonstrate to me that there were not any monsters at all, telling me I just had have a bad dream.

He walked around the room, moved all the boxes, even the bed. He also opened the closet and smiled at me reassuringly, while I stayed at the door mortally scared, afraid that the animal was hidden and planning on attack him the way it had attacked me.

I guess I would have finally calmed down for good if I hadn’t seen his worried expression when he saw my sheets, and after examining the fabric, taking a closer look at my pillow, he had insisted me to repeat where exactly had the animal bitten me.

Something had been there. There was black fur on the white cotton. I saw it. He did too.

Later, when it was morning and the light and the sun made me feel more confident, I gave him a detailed description of my magical dark prince but he didn’t pay any attention, telling me again I should not worry at all.

A nightmare was a nightmare. It had not been real and could not hurt me in any way anymore.

Part of me wanted to believe him thought part of me still doubted.

The Doctor coming to our home that evening helped a lot to calm me, repeating me the same words my parents did. He gave me a pair of injections while they expressed their concern for the possibility of a big rat biting me that night.

Many years passed until I was able to sleep alone again and still today I’m scared of black dogs and rats.

 

* * *

[read this story in spanish](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6572650/chapters/15038773)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want, you can follow me on tumblr:  
> http://camiletale.tumblr.com/  
> or in twitter:  
> @cafetinne


	2. The Guest I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something important I would like to warn you about before I talk to you about Him.  
> What I’m going to tell you will probably make you think I’m crazy at some point.  
> I would think that myself.  
> But, if you go ahead and keep reading this, I hope you give me a vote of confidence and understand I’m perfectly sane nevertheless.  
> It’s just that, sometimes, we’re faced with the singularity of the extraordinary.

There’s something important I would like to warn you about before I talk to you about Him.  
What I’m going to tell you will probably make you think I’m crazy at some point.  
I would think that myself.  
But, if you go ahead and keep reading this, I hope you give me a vote of confidence and understand I’m perfectly sane nevertheless.  
It’s just that, sometimes, we’re faced with the singularity of the extraordinary.

I’ve told you before about my memories from my house when it was still under construction.  
My mother took an unexpected opportunity to close her vet clinic in the city and we moved to a small village where she could keep doing her job and, at the same time, fulfill her dream of restoring an almost derelict property she had inherited from her family a few years before.

“A small village” was in fact the tiny town that was ten miles away from our home, which kept resisting the passage of time as well as it could while partially hidden within a lush chestnut grove, close to a river. The ruins of an old water mill were not too far away, and I spent many hours playing there as a child.  
You could think my childhood was quite solitary but, however, for years there were always many people around us.

Restoring the house took quite some time and the working crews brought some entertainment to our lives during spring and summer.  
When an acceptable part of the house was finished, my mother had the wonderful idea of inviting a friend from her college years, who also had a kid about my age.

That’s how I met Yves.

We got along so well that their visit for the week ended up with him staying with us the whole month. He quickly turned into a regular and indispensable guest.  
He used to arrive only a few days after the school year ended, and stayed with me practically all summer.

You’re probably living in the city, and I bet I sound like I was a small-town asocial kid with only one friend. But you must understand that, for me, who attended a rural school with only six children more and rarely went further than the village with my mother to help her with errands, Yves, with his funny anecdotes from public school and his stylish urban outfits, was just the best thing throughout the year.

I adored him.

He was my best friend and, when He came to our lives, I had already made all sorts of plans to start college in Autumn and move in with Yves.  
Plans that never became a reality because my best friend, my Yves, fell seriously ill.  
At first it didn’t seem that severe, then he started to feel always tired. Sad. Sick.  
They had him tested for a myriad of things but a clear diagnosis was never obtained.  
Finally, he had to be hospitalized and, although we tried to skype every day and pretend everything was just normal, it was painfully obvious that I was slowly losing him.

I remember with June 21st absolute precision.

It was the day my heart broke in pieces for the first time.

I was out of the house looking for my mother. I was wearing my thick grey wool cardigan, a cardigan she hated because it was so worn off that “it made me look like a hobo”. I didn’t really care about her opinion, I liked that jacket and thought it was somehow fashionable. The way I looked had become more important to me those days and I had even made thumbholes in the sleeves. I had just recovered from the flu and was always cold, even if summer had just started.  
When I finally found her, I expected she’d look at me and start complaining, but she was just sitting on the grass while reading something on her tablet and rubbing her eyes as if she was exhausted.

I called her and she looked up. Her eyes were darker than usual and her face was too serious. I worried immediately.  
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news…” She stretched out her hand towards me but I didn’t dare to accept it. That hand was offering comfort for something terrible. I knew it and didn’t want to take it.

“Yves…”

I practically wrestled the tablet from her hands to read it myself. She went on with a trembling voice.

“Yves did not… he… he couldn’t make it”.

I didn’t want to hear it. I shook my head, as if by doing so I could erase the meaning of her words. No, no, no. When I finally spoke, my voice was hoarse with rage.

“But… they never found anything… he was… he was getting better!”

My mother cleared her throat before speaking.

“His mother sent me an e-mail. He started to feel bad again and his state worsened very quickly. The doctors couldn’t do anything for him”.

My eyes ran over the lines while I felt the tears pooling, burning me. I wiped them away and forced myself to finish.  
I didn’t understand half the message; it was pure nonsense. I gave the tablet back to my mother, looking at her with a mix of confusion and anger.

“This message makes no sense whatsoever”.

I wiped my cheeks clean again with my sleeve and my nose with the back of my hand. My mother cleaned her face too with a tissue and offered me one immediately. If there was something that grossed her out no matter what, that was cleaning your nose using your hands, no matter the tragedy.

“Suzanne must be devastated”.

She tried to cover it, but her voice broke a little.

“I can’t even imagine what she’s going through right now”.

She looked at me while her eyes welled up again and I took mine away from her feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t want my mother to look at me thinking I could die too. And, if it couldn’t be avoided, at least I preferred to not have to look at that kind of anguish in her eyes. Mostly because the only thing I had to offer back was my own distress.  
Trying to find a way out from that troubling glance, I insisted.

“But it is absurd. Ghosts? She’s stupid”.

My mother raised a hand demanding silence and I pressed my lips together.I knew I had no right to vent to her like that. Yves’ mom was her friend and she had loved him dearly too.

“Losing Yves is just too much. He was her only son and it’s only normal that she’s beside herself. I’m not going to judge or analyze whatever she says today, I will wait a few days before calling her. She needs time to rest.”

She stood up and opened her arms towards me.

“I’m so sorry this has happened, dear, I know how much you loved him”.

I tried to play tough for two seconds but, of course, I ended up crying in my mother’s arms. I couldn’t even say goodbye to Yves by attending his funeral, because his family was not religious and he was going to be burned without any rites. There wasn’t going to be a gravestone. Nothing. I felt like I had been cheated.

When I was finally able to stop crying, my mother held my hands and pointed towards the path to the forest with her head.

“Let’s take a stroll, I think we both need it”.

We left the house behind, talking about Yves non stop, remembering all the good times, trying to heal the fresh wound a little.

Night began to fall, the sun sinking down in the horizon, and soon we were walking in a soft orange to purple darkness.  
The path through the grove ended, but we kept walking along the roadside.  
The unusual noise of a motorbike driving quite fast made us cut our chat short.

“Careful, Laurie”, my mother said annoyed. “Someone seems to be in a hurry”.

We stood still, as far as possible from the asphalt, waiting for the motorbike to pass us by, when, suddenly, we felt a rustling of leaves behind our backs.

An animal.

A few steps away, the head of a doe stuck out from the bushes. She sniffed around nervously and looked ahead.

“Mom, look!”  
I whispered anxiously, holding her arm. I had a premonition something bad was about to happen. Afraid to scare the doe, I hardly dared to breath. 

After only a few seconds that felt like hours, the doe jumped into the road and stopped, looking directly at the rider like the proverbial deer in the headlights.  
I screamed and so did my mother. We tried to scare the animal away but she wouldn’t do it.

“They’re going to crash! Oh my God! They’re going to crash!” My mother’s voice was pure anguish.

I watched the biker trying to desperately negotiate a sharp bend to avoid running the animal over. The wheels scratched the asphalt loudly and I covered my eyes before I could hear the impact of metal against the road.  
I heard my own voice crying “No!” full of horror and then the noise followed by a deaf silence.

When I opened my eyes again, the doe wasn’t there anymore but the motorbike was lying on the road.  
The biker’s body had flown out and was now immobile, face down on the road.  
My mother was running to them while making gestures at me.

“Run! Go home and call an ambulance!”

I couldn’t move. I was so nervous my teeth were chattering.

“RUN!”

I ran along the road and through the forest, with my heart pounding, feeling my heartbeat hammering in my ears. I arrived home breathless and called emergency services while trying to recall the exact point of the road where the accident had happened. They attempted to give me some tips on what to do, but I was too far away from the crash scene to be useful. There was no service in that area and I couldn’t call my mom to pass them either.  
When I went back, the paramedics were already there.  
I couldn’t even see the biker, I didn’t even know if they were a man or a woman. The paramedics hadn’t removed the helmet yet and they were talking to my mother in hurried whispers.

I confess I didn’t dare to move closer, afraid of the possibility the person was dead. I kept my distance until my mother called me over and explained that they were going to continue assisting the wounded rider at our house.

“Is it too bad?” 

The anxiety was devouring me from the inside. My mother put her arm around my shoulders. She smelled like sweat and nervousness, she was worried too.

“I hope it’s not. They are going to finish some tests at our house and then I guess they’re going to hospitalize them. Let’s go”.

I can’t tell you much of what happened after those chaotic moments, because I don’t really remember it clearly, probably because of all the nerves and fear. My father had passed away some years before in a car accident, and to witness one myself was just too much.

When we got home I went straight to my bedroom and stayed there for more than an hour, just trying to calm myself down and not paying attention to anything else for the moment.

My brain kept flashing back to the shape of the body, face down on the asphalt, and to unreal visions of the doe, bloody and dead on the road.  
Both appeared in front of my eyes again and again, as if my own subconscious was trying to create an even more terrifying scene for me to feel sick about.  
Finally, the need to know if the rider was safe became stronger that the fear of hearing he was not, so I decided to go down and check on them.

I wasn’t allowed in. Of course.

One of the paramedics pointed to a chair in the hallway without giving me the chance to ask any questions. I understood I shouldn’t disturb them, so I sat down and waited until the door opened at last. My mother came out accompanied by the doctor and his two assistants.  
Their expressions were mostly calm, so I stood up and went to them.

“Fortunately he was wearing the helmet. He could have ended up dead”.

My mother nodded and I heard her thank the doctor for his services.

“He was really lucky you were there and saw him. One could say you’ve saved his life. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to find him at night in these lonely roads”.

My mother noticed my presence and smiled at me. She looked so tired.

“Doctor, this is my son, Laurie”.

The doctor extended his hand and shook mine firmly, shaking his head when I asked if the rider’s condition was dire.

“No. But he’s going to need a couple of days to recover. He is young, he’ll be ok”.

He smiled kindly and there was something on his way of reassuring us that reminded me of my father. I liked him.  
He turned to my mother to ask another question.

“Do you know of any hotels nearby?”

The closest thing to a hotel near our house was a pilgrim’s hostel that belonged to a church and was located in a village 45 miles away.  
I looked at my mother and whispered in her ear that it might be better for him to spend the night at our house. Her eyebrows raised in surprise and she was not too happy about my suggestion. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to insist.

“Mom, there isn’t even one decent place nearby… if there’s no need for him to be hospitalized…”

The doctor supported me unexpectedly, which I appreciated.

“Ma’am, if I may, I think your son is right”.

My mother looked at both of us hesitantly.

“Perhaps he doesn’t want to stay with some strangers, Laurie”.

Clearly, the one who didn’t want a stranger staying in her house was her.  
It seems so logical now, but at that moment I couldn’t help to turn a deaf ear and ask the doctor if the guy was conscious instead. When he nodded with a warm smile, I asked the older man if he could inquire if the stranger would want to stay the night in our home.  
Checking he was safe was a priority for me. A need. The mere thought of someone dead inside my house made me sick. I had just lost Yves. I needed this stranger to be alive. The doctor said we had saved him. I needed to keep myself busy with his life to not think about Yves’ death all the time.  
My mom turned to me when the doctor left us alone. She was worried.

“I don’t think he would want to stay here, Laurie, he doesn’t know us at all and he only has a mild concussion and some bruising, thank God for that”.

She was right and I knew it. But still.

I swallowed hard, feeling an invisible lump in my throat. This person and Yves were not the only ones in my mind. There was someone else. I wanted to speak normally as to not worry her even more, but I could only manage a hoarse whisper.

“I thought he was dead…”

My mouth was dry, but I had to make her understand somehow.

“When I saw the body on the road… He… I thought…”

She didn’t need to hear anything else. She was my mother. She put an arm around my shoulders and leaned into me, trying to comfort me.

“Dear, this has been a really rough day for you”.

Her compassion was my only chance.

“If it had happened to me… would you want me to stay all alone in a motel?”

I kept talking to stop her from getting a word in.

“Did he say something when you saw him? What does he look like? Is he from a nearby town?”

She shook her head.

“He could barely speak. He had just recovered his consciousness and was very confused”.

The doctor peeked out from the biker’s room, holding a mobile phone, and beckoned my mother over.

“Ma’am, please. It’s for you. It’s Camile’s mother”.

Camile.

I repeated it my head while my mom went to answer the phone. It was a beautiful name. Camile.  
I had been left alone in the hallway again, so I went back to sit on the chair. Exhausted, I fell asleep.

“Laurie… Laurie!”

Feeling groggy, I opened my eyes with effort. I wasn’t really sure if I had been sleeping for ten minutes or ten years. My neck ached and I rubbed it, all the events of the evening quickly flooding my mind as it began to truly awaken.

“Dear, you fell asleep” My mom touched my face affectively.

“Is the doctor still here?”

“He just left”.

“And Camile?”

She smiled softly.

“He is still in bed. I’ve talked to his mother on the phone”,

“Is she coming to pick him up?”

“No, she can’t. She’s out of the country on a business trip. Poor woman, she was so worried about him”.

“Oh”.

Suddenly, everything seemed almost normal.

Camile, whoever he was, was not severely wounded. He had a mother, just like me, who was working, like mine did, and was worried about him, like every mother would be.  
He felt like less of a stranger now. I wanted to see him, and put a face to his name and story, so badly that I interrupted my mother with a bit of anxiousness.

“And what is going to happen to him in the end?”

She patted my shoulder and smiled a bit more widely. It was clear that she had calmed down after talking to Camile’s mother.

“He’ll be staying here until he recovers. His mother was so horrified at the idea of him staying alone, I just had to offer our help. I suppose we can take care of him for two or three days, since you were so worried too. The doctor will be back to check on him the day after tomorrow.”

I looked at the closed door at the end of the hallway.

After all of my insistence to my mom to let him stay, I felt suddenly shy.

“Is he awake?”

She nodded.

“He is. Go see him, that would cheer him up. I’m going to prepare something light for dinner. Come to the kitchen in fifteen minutes to pick it up and bring it back to him. If he feels well enough, you can have dinner together”.

I looked at her a bit alarmed and she rolled her eyes.

“Only if you want, of course. He is very kind and polite. So was his mother. I think they’re not French; he has some kind of accent I couldn’t place… well, just go!”

I tried to smooth my jacket with my hands. Then my hair. I was nervous. It has always taken me some effort to interact with strangers, mainly because I am not used to do it than because of true shyness.  
The truth was that I felt curious.  
I knocked on the door and waited politely a few seconds before opening it. I entered and turned back to close it immediately.

Maybe I am a bit shy after all.

I started introducing myself nervously, without lifting my eyes from the floor.

“Hello. I hope you feel a little bit better. My name’s Lau…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence.  
When I looked up at him, pure terror shot through my body and froze my voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to read this story in spanish, just click in my profile *^^*  
> I'm so happy I'm sharing this, I hope you like it!  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
